Wit Happens

A collection that proves Jewish humor knows no geographic bounds.

Searching for some well-traveled humor? Look no further than this innovative collection, which investigates Jewish humor in television, film, comedy performance, and literature spanning Canada, the US, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. This wide-ranging compilation of Jewish “humors”—from the fallout of a Holocaust joke told in Japan, to Mel Brooks’s invocation of longstanding Jewish satirization in Blazing Saddles, to reevaluations of Jewish comedic themes from Kafka and Seinfeld—highlights the transnationality of Jewish identity and humor while emphasizing how Jewish culture shifts in unexpected ways across time and place. The contributions illustrate the value of studying Jewish humor that decenters the US and Ashkenazi-centered analysis, broadening considerations of the possibilities within Jewish cultural production through humor as it transforms globally.

Author Biography

Jennifer Caplan is associate professor and the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials (Wayne State University Press) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on Jewish humor. Jarrod Tanny is professor of history and the Charles and Hannah Block Distinguished Scholar in Jewish History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is the author of City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa and The “Seinfeld” Talmud: A Jewish Guide to a Show About Nothing. Avinoam Patt is the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at New York University and inaugural director of the NYU Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Among his published works, he is author of Israel and the Holocaust and The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt (Wayne State University Press). Contributors: Jonathan Abel, Lauren Brooks, Jennifer Caplan, Marat Grinberg, Daniel Heifetz, Ber Kotlerman, Mark Leuchter, Grace Kessler Overbeke, Avinoam Patt, Ariane Santerre, Liat Steir-Livny, Jarrod Tanny.